LITMIR.BIZ

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again. It hadn’t even rung through earlier. Now, I couldn’t believe it: it rang.

      I gasped, waiting with bated breath. ‘Please. Please.’ I made such a tight fist with my free hand, my arm twinged with pain. ‘Pick up.’

      The tone stopped and there was a sound, someone breathing.

      ‘Zoe?’ I gripped the phone. ‘Is that you, sweetheart?’

      The breathing caught, faltered and started up a regular rhythm again.

      I pointed upstairs to Stephen to indicate DI Carter should pick up another phone; he needed to hear this. Stephen stood staring before spurring himself into action and running up the stairs two at a time. I heard murmured voices upstairs and then the click of another phone – probably the one in the bedroom – being picked up.

      ‘Zoe?’ My heart was pounding. I wanted to reach through the phone and hold her close. ‘Zoe?’

      The line went dead.

      I slid along the wall to the floor, the handset crashing onto the kitchen tiles. Footsteps on the stairs, in the hall.

      DI Carter filled the kitchen door frame, darkening the room. ‘We’ll trace it.’

      I nodded, silent tears coursing down my face once again. Stephen moved past DI Carter and sat next to me, drawing me into his arms. I stiffened with the unfamiliarity of it.

      ‘Talk to Keira,’ I said through my sobs. ‘She must know more than she’s letting on.’

3

      At lunchtime, Stephen went out in his car to search, making me promise to stay put in case she walked back through the door or rang the house phone. Before he left, I followed him to the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed, watched as he put his favourite cashmere jumper on.

      ‘Freya, were you really in the office yesterday morning? Did Zoe really not see either of us since Thursday night?’

      I felt my palms grow sweaty. ‘Yes, I’ve had a lot on recently.’

      ‘But for neither of us to know that Zoe wasn’t well yesterday…’ His gaze rested on me. ‘I mean that’s awful. You’ve let her down. You’ve let Zoe down.’

      I brought my head up sharply. ‘I’ve let her down?’

      ‘Yes, you’re her mother and you knew I was going away as of the early hours of Friday morning.’

      ‘Well, I realised I was late with marking papers so I left before Zoe was awake,’ I said, defensive. ‘But she is sixteen! She’s hardly a little girl any more, even though you insist on treating her like one.’

      Stephen eyed me and I looked away. ‘While she’s under this roof, we look after her. It doesn’t matter if she’s twenty-something and still living here.’ His voice grew gruff. ‘I love Zoe to the moon and back, and it makes me sick to think she was alone, feeling unwell, for even one second. Now she’s not even answering our texts. She might be in trouble and I’m not there for her.’ He paused. ‘You know she’s been a bit quiet for a few months now. Maybe she found out. Found out your secret.’

      ‘Well, the only way she would have found out is if you had told her.’

      ‘Or she happened to find something…’

      I pushed my tongue around the inside of my mouth, desperately biting back all the cutting remarks I wanted to make. Stephen, knowing my weak points all too well, picked up on this; he was testing me.

      ‘Go on, Freya, tell me what’s going through your mind.’

      ‘Well, it’s interesting how my role is to ensure she goes to school, is cared for when unwell, and yours is to save her when she’s in trouble.’ I pursed my lips. ‘Like a knight in fucking armour.’

      ‘You’re unreal,’ he said. ‘Provoking an argument when our daughter’s missing. Not cool, Freya, not cool.’

      ‘No, Stephen, not cool is making out I’m the bad guy here when we both dropped the ball. I think Keira most probably has something to do with this. Carter needs to question her, find out what she knows.’

      ‘If anything,’ he said firmly and left, without another word, leaving the ever-growing rift between us to keep on growing.

      Keira had mentioned the farm up the road and a memory surfaced of the farmer, Jerry Wyre, spotting me eating out with Robert a few months ago, just after the trouble with Zoe. He had stopped and smiled, almost knowingly, just beyond the window. His look, that day, had unnerved me; as if he now knew my secret, and might have some sort of power over me.

      I realised now that the police needed to search the farm and fast. I approached DI Carter in the kitchen.

      ‘You know Keira Sullivan? The girl we were talking about earlier?’

      ‘The one you don’t appear to like much?’ He gave a wry smile.

      I nodded, pushing down the nervous butterflies clawing away at my stomach. ‘She has led Zoe astray before,’ I was keen to emphasise.

      ‘Go on.’

      ‘She told me that on Thursday they had a study day and headed to the farm, Rook Farm, up the road.’ I nodded firmly, my eyes not leaving his, keen for him to understand the urgency. ‘I think you need to get up there now. The man – the farmer, Jerry Wyre – he isn’t to be trusted.’

      ‘Why not?’ The DI scribbled something on his pad.

      ‘Why not what?’

      ‘Why isn’t he to be trusted?’

      I was about to mention the time he had seen me and Robert eating out but bit my tongue. ‘I’ve had to talk to him, the farmer, before about the way he is around Zoe.’

      ‘How is he?’

      ‘She told me once that he made a pass at her. I warned him off and told him she was just a schoolgirl.’ I was talking fast. ‘They’re loners, you know? No children.’

      ‘She told you that? What did Jerry Wyre say?’

      I felt my frustration mounting. ‘He told me she was lying.’ I paused. ‘But why would Zoe lie about something like that?’ I balled my fists.

      ‘Was Zoe grateful you did that?’

      My gaze shifted to the ground. ‘As much as any teenager is grateful for anything you do.’

      ‘Meaning?’ DI Carter raised a brow.

      ‘Meaning’ – I brought my eyes up to his once more – ‘she shouted and told me she could fight her own battles.’

      ‘Did she tell you in no uncertain terms that he had made an unwarranted pass at her?’

      ‘That’s what she insinuated, yes.’

      He nodded, acknowledging something and jotting it down. Then, pausing, I watched his forehead crease in confusion. ‘But why did Zoe and Keira head that way if Zoe feels like that about him? Are you sure he made a pass at her, or did you read into that?’

      I clenched my fists. ‘Because Keira persuaded her, I’m sure of it. They were playing a stupid Truth or Dare game. One I thought they had grown out of, but I discovered that not only do they play still it, but the stakes are higher. But they’re still just teenagers.’ I felt the onset of a migraine, my mind unable to cope with the sudden realisation of how little I knew about my daughter. ‘My point is, Detective, what if this was them playing their silly game and it went wrong? What if that farmer has done something to my daughter?’ I stepped closer to him, my tongue moving fast around my mouth. ‘Are you listening? I’m giving you as much information as I can.’

      ‘Trust me,’ he said, unfazed, ‘we are doing everything we can to

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